


hit me with your best shot

by vickovac



Series: she (she is the words that I can't find) [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, because they're literal perfection, i blinked and this was nearly 10000 words help, mainly fluff with a whisper of smut, so I'm starting an au collection for peraltiago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 09:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19332229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vickovac/pseuds/vickovac
Summary: 'You’re my new neighbour and I completely hate you because you play your music loudly at 3am and watch the same movie ten times a day so I leave you a passive-aggressive note which you find hilarious and start an all out-war but when I go over to rip you a new one your smile kind of makes me forget my own name’ AUorWhen Amy Santiago gets an infuriating new neighbour, Jake Peralta, who enjoys pushing her buttons a little too much, she starts a war that she might not be able to win.





	hit me with your best shot

**Author's Note:**

> HI. So I decided to ‘just try one’ episode of brooklyn nine nine on Netflix and ended up bingeing all 5 seasons in one week. As I’m sure any thespian of the show could have told me would happen, I fell deeply madly obsessively in love with it and (because they’re the best) with jake & amy. I’ve now decided to stop annoying my friends with how it’s honestly the best show I have ~ever~ seen and jake peralta is a literal ray of sunshine and how peraltiago is the superior ship of all time and write a lot of fic instead. So I’m starting with an AU prompts series for those disgustingly-in-love peanut-throwing, captain-killing, stupid-bet-making losers.  
> also if this sucks it’s because I actually wrote a plan and my laptop ate it soooo it’s mainly freestyle sorry and yeah I blinked and suddenly it was nearly 10,000 words?

‘Lorenzo Shaw.’ Amy hisses, partly because she’s winded after chasing him for eight straight blocks, and partly because she wants to savour every moment of her long-awaited victory over this particular perp. ‘You’re under arrest.’

She reels off the Miranda rights with relish, ignoring the stinging in her palms where she grazed them slamming Shaw against the dumpster because right now her body’s so charged with adrenaline she could probably be whacked over the head with one of her binders and wouldn’t even flinch.

Perp handcuffed, hands wiped down carefully with disinfectant, Amy and her secondary return to the six-four where she gives her desk a fleeting glance before marching Shaw off to be processed. By the time she’s ploughed through the paperwork, interviewed him and handed him over to be charged, it’s late. Amy’s almost narcoleptic with exhaustion and even forgoes a gloat to her captain about the arrest she’s been after for nearly two months. Last night’s episode of Jeopardy is sitting patiently in her DVR and there’s leftover Thai food in the fridge she’s been thinking about for the past two hours.

She’s traipsed up the stairs to her flat and is slotting the key into the lock when she hears it; an obnoxiously loud humming drifting through the door of apartment 69, or the one _right next to hers_. It sounds suspiciously like a country-pop hybrid and fluctuates between being so loud it’s reverberating through the door itself and quietening to more of a distant purr. She spots a tattered cardboard box that’s been left by the door and realises that Mrs Espasito’s replacement tenant is moving in – at one a.m., apparently – and that he has the worst handwriting she’s ever seen. The chicken scratch on the box either says ‘stuff from under my bed’ or ‘stop farming ugly mopes’. She’s not sure, but on reflection, it’s probably the first.

Either way, Amy’s got a feeling she’s going to miss Mrs Espasito, as much as the elderly lady had been cantankerous and ill-humoured at the best of times. She’d been sceptical of Amy’s then-boyfriend, Teddy, from the start, and made this painfully obvious on the few occasions they’d crossed paths. Now, three months post-breakup, Amy still feels a slight twinge of regret at not trusting her neighbour’s instincts, thinking bitterly of all the Pilsners she needn’t have choked down.

Still. If the box her new neighbour’s clearly forgotten (which, Amy can’t help but notice, is crammed with popsicle sticks, boxes of powdered doughnuts, what looks like a crumpled file with an indiscernible logo, thanks to the stains covering it, and general miscellaneous crap in the shape of broken Rubix cubes and dinosaur toys) and the incessant humming are anything to go by, the mystery man of apartment 69 is not going to be her new best friend.

Not that she and Mrs Espasito were in any way close, but Amy likes to think they shared a mutual respect for one another. (She’s wrong).

She considers knocking on the door and handing her neighbour the box of…junk, there’s really no other way to describe it, but decides against it when the humming stops and becomes a full, shameless rendition of a familiar song she can’t quite place. If the box is still there tomorrow, Amy thinks sleepily, as she peels off her dirty slacks and collapses into bed, she’ll knock and introduce herself. At any rate, she’s comfortably full of Thai food and so tired that she barely notices that the singing is penetrating the thin walls between the apartments, and slips into an easy slumber.

x

The box has vanished when Amy leaves her apartment the next morning, fresh and buzzing from the caffeine sharp and steady in her bloodstream. She momentarily looks at number 69, wondering if now’s the right time to knock and hand her neighbour the list she drew up this morning of the best grocery stores, bodegas and coffee joints their shared neighbourhood has to offer, but she’s already behind schedule today from taking time to craft the list in the first place. The risk of arriving less than half an hour before the morning briefing is just too great. So, off to work she goes.

Unfortunately, it becomes evident that Amy’s missed her chance at a ‘hot-off-the-mark’ introduction to whoever has taken residence in apartment 69. She knocks on the door that evening at around six when she returns from work, but there’s no answer. She tries again an hour later, but the stilling silence that resounds leaves her to wait until the next morning.

She trots over carrying her list (now with an addendum – a timetable of when the best parking spots are available) and firmly raps on the door. Again. No answer. Amy’s a little perplexed, she hasn’t _heard_ anyone leave or enter the apartment, but it’s not until midnight that evening that things take a turn for the…infuriating.

She’s nestled nicely in her bed, having checked her three alarms, put away her laundry, and picked out a pantsuit for tomorrow. Her eyelids are at half-mast, drooping under the dewy moonlight seeping through her curtains, when it happens.

Her neighbour is playing music. Country-pop, to be exact. And it’s ringing through her bedroom walls. At twelve a.m. Amy rolls onto her back and lets out an exasperated huff, reaching up with clenched fingers to rub her forehead. She knows the walls are thin, but it was never an issue before. Mrs Espasito liked telenovelas, and truthfully, Amy was, admittedly, better acquainted with the characters of her favourite soaps than she’d have liked, but at least her old neighbour had adhered to common courtesy and had her television off or muted by ten in the evening.

Honestly, though, she hasn’t even _met_ this guy – and it’s definitely a guy, because a decidedly male voice is now chanting exuberantly along to the lyrics as though there’s no tomorrow – so the thought of storming over there to tell him off leaves a bad taste in her mouth. No, Amy thinks, she’ll give him the benefit of the doubt – he’s only been here a day or two – and instead pulls out the earplugs she keeps in the drawer by her bed, and after some tossing and turning, manages to snatch a few hours of restless sleep.

x

By the following Monday, however, Amy’s patience has worn thin. Despite _still_ having not met her new neighbour, because he never seems to be home when Amy knocks on his door, she knows an awful lot about him.

For one thing, he’s got a real penchant for Taylor Swift. But seemingly the desire to hear her admittedly dreamy vocals only strikes him in the ungodly hours of the morning. Nearly every day for the past week and a half that he’s been in apartment 69, Noisy Guy, as she’s christened him, has woken her up by blasting something from the singer’s repertoire. As far as she can tell, his favourites are ‘Love Story’, ‘You Belong With Me’ and ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’, given how often they crop up and disturb Amy’s fitful sleep. Sometimes he’ll attempt to sing alongside Taylor with an atrocious Scottish accent, which admittedly Amy might find funny if she wasn’t so sleep-deprived.

Unfortunately, that’s not all she’s found out about Noisy Guy. Even her days off – of which she’s had approximately two since he moved in – which she had planned to spend sleeping until noon, have been completely disrupted by his antics.

Because apparently, Noisy Guy really likes watching the same movie. On repeat. At top volume. Amy’s not sure what it is: she doesn’t recognise any of the dialogue, which is drowning in expletives, but it’s got a lot of gunfire and shouting and stupid action music and so it’s pretty distinctive in her mind after spending her Saturday hearing the opening theme about six times.

She’s been weighing up the pros and cons of marching over there and ripping Noisy Guy a new one for the past three days. Her eyes are swollen and bruised with exhaustion; her skin is tinged with an unhealthy sheen from lack of sleep and she’s completely lost her usual vigour for paperwork, which is rapidly accumulating on her desk and acting as a constant reminder of what a selfish jerk the new tenant of apartment 69 is.

Of course, she needs a few hours alone with her laptop to construct the perfect ‘look, I know we haven’t even spoken yet even though we’re neighbours because you never answer the door when I knock, but I really need you to stop playing Taylor Swift at two a.m. because I haven’t slept properly in a week and a half and it’s between strangling you or one of my perps’ letter. Which she’ll then memorise and recite fluently when she finally pays him a visit.

Inevitably, that’s not _exactly_ how things end up playing out.

As Mondays go, it’s not been a pleasant one. Her first alarm sounds shrilly and she groans as she’s cruelly pulled from the five hours of sleep she managed last night when Taylor finally stopped warbling at 3 a.m. She ends up tripping on one of the pillows she threw off the bed in a fit of frustration when it failed to block out next door’s music and knocks her phone onto the bathroom tiles in the process, where a tiny crack that won’t rub off bleeds onto the screen. Cursing, she stays under the shower for an extra five minutes in the hopes that the scalding water might chase away the black cloud hanging over her, but instead she gets shampoo in her eyes, which, by the time she’s dressed, are too sore and bloodshot to apply her usual light ministrations, so she dabs them with mascara and hastens into the kitchen to find she’s eaten her last breakfast bar and there’s nothing in her fridge but a mouldering cabbage and some leftover Chinese takeout. Ignoring the protests of her stomach, she flies out of her apartment, doubling back to lock the door, and tries to suppress the burn of rage as she looks over at apartment 69, where no doubt her apparently nocturnal neighbour is halfway through a good ten hours of peaceful slumber.

It turns out that the six-four is in disarray; there’s already been a fire in the evidence lock-up and two perps in the holding cell have somehow procured knives and are making threats even as they stare down the barrels of about fifteen guns. Instead of working with her secondary on a promising murder case involving a door locked from the inside and a disappeared pizza delivery, Amy spends her shift replenishing fire extinguishers and sorting through singed fur coats, murder hammers, and art in the lock-up. Under duress from her captain, she agrees to stay late – usually a favourite pastime of hers, but not today – and by the time it hits ten ‘o’ clock Amy is completely spent. After stopping at her regular Polish place for potato pancakes, perogies and a cup of hot chocolate, she slopes up the steps to her apartment with an expression of abject misery and frankly, harbouring a lot of ill-will towards the universe.

Thankfully, it’s quiet. A little unnervingly so, but Amy allows herself a tiny sigh of relief as she pushes her door open and shells her coat, shoes and bag before flinging them onto their hangers. Maybe the universe is finally taking pity on her, and Noisy Guy has decided to move out and ship off to Florida, just about the worst place in America Amy can think of. She hopes he’s knee-deep in uncomfortably balmy heat, mangy crocodile teeth and bright blue soda by now.

By twelve, she’s pulled on a clean pair of pyjamas and is sinking into bed. Her hair’s dishevelled and escaping from her ponytail, but she can’t bring herself to brush it into place with the way her every limb is aching from the bone. She’s closing her eyes, wriggling her throbbing feet to warm up, when –

_No._

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Amy shouts, yanking the bedsheets off and scrambling to her feet.

Because there’s the unmistakeable sound of someone’s key twisting in the lock and the padding of feet across the floorboards and then, what else, but _fucking Taylor Swift_ wailing about hot summers and revenge and mattresses.

Right. That settles it.

There’s no point storming over there in a rage, Amy decides, with startling clarity given how tired she is. The odds of her new jerk of a neighbour actually answering the door are slim to none. She might as well treat this situation as she would a particularly troublesome piece of paperwork. Methodically. Rationally.

With a dab of pettiness, because nobody’s perfect.

So, she composes a letter. Well. It’s more of a rating system. Ranging from the first day that Noisy Guy moved into apartment 69 and decided – inadvertently – to ruin her life, to present.

 _Dear ~~Asshole~~ Neighbor, _Amy plucks her best fountain pen from her bedside drawer and begins to write.

_Firstly, let me be the first (I presume, given the erratic hours you keep) to welcome you to #69. I reside in apartment #70, and over the past week, have become unexpectedly familiar with your vocal range and interesting taste in films._

_Thank you for your epic performances! Given the slightness of the walls between our apartments, you really had the perfect stage and I’m sure you are keen to hear my verdict._

**Tuesday, 2:20am: ‘You Belong With Me’ (Taylor Swift)** : 7/10. You clearly know this song inside-out, which is commendable (or is it?). However, you were a little pitchy on the bridge.

 **Wednesday, 3:30am: ‘Stare Into The Maggot Drawer’ (Unknown)** 3/10. I am not familiar with this song, but after lying awake listening to you repeat the same single verse at least thirty-two times, I believe I could give a flawless rendition of it upon request. Lyrically, the song is problematic in terms of both syntax and subject-matter. Please find attached the number for an exterminator at the bottom of this note.

 **Thursday, 1:39am: ‘Unbreak My Heart’ (Toni Braxton).** 6/10. An ambitious choice, but you attempted it anyway. The vibrato was shaky.

 **Thursday, 1:54am: ‘I Want It That Way’ (Backstreet Boys).** 9/10. I have always said if you are to be woken up by a moron singing at 2am, it might as well be a Backstreet Boys classic.

 **Friday, 2:02am: Scatting.** 1/10. Please never again.

 **Saturday, [not sure what the time was because I was too exhausted to read any of my alarm clocks]: ‘Call Me Maybe’ (Carly Rae Jepson).** 4/10. Points for the enthusiasm, but I believe you got a fair amount of the lyrics wrong. The correct version is not ‘I just caught you, and this is crazy, but here’s my badge number, enjoy jail baby’.

 **Sunday, 12:58am: ‘Love Story’ (Taylor Swift).** 8/10. You _really_ love Taylor Swift, but did you have to sing it on a loop four times?

_I appreciate you keeping me up every single night this week, but in future, kindly be quiet and have some respect for your neighbors! Otherwise, I will be forced to contact the Superintendent and have you disciplined._

_Yours sincerely,_

_#70._

‘Ugh, my calligraphy is going to hell. That seminar was a joke.’ Amy mutters, blowing gently on the drying ink. She fumbles around in her drawer for blu-tac, slips into the hallway and sticks the letter just below the ‘69’ stamped on her neighbour’s door.

If that doesn’t teach him, Amy thinks, smiling to herself despite the cacophony still ongoing and still infuriatingly audible through her walls, nothing will.

x

So, it seems that nothing will.

Amy forgets about the letter until the moment she rounds the corner, keys jangling in her hand, and sees a dog-eared piece of paper stuck to her door, her own letter nowhere in sight. Something tells Amy it’s not an apology letter, but she yanks it off the door and after sloshing water into the kettle and sinking into her couch, starts to read.

Almost immediately, her blood begins to simmer.

_hi #70_

_im a bit hurt you didn’t like my singing??? you have scuppered my life-long dreams of appearing on the voice with my long-lost twin brother. shame on you._

_but hey you clearly spent a lot of time crafting that rating system (nice handwriting btw) so kudos to you for that i guess must’ve taken all night. so in return ill try and broaden my repetwore, just for you :P_

_anywaaaaayyyyyyyy_ (Amy grimaces) _please don’t report me to the super!! what would i ever do. don’t tell me – next you’re gonna get me in detention, right? maybe get your mom to call mine? just to make things easier, her number’s at the bottom of this letter. Her name is Karen._

_see you around, neighbor! ;)_

_the moron from #69_

Amy reads the letter once, twice, three times, before she crumples it into a sad, inky ball in her fist. What was she expecting? Of course he was going to be a massive jerk, with terrible spelling, grammar and handwriting to boot. She’s startled out of a vivid daydream in which Noisy Guy is forced to sit at a desk and write out lines 500 times while she watches on by the low whining of the kettle and it’s over a hot chamomile tea that she plots her next move.

Normally on a Tuesday evening, Amy would have cleaned her apartment, gone through her VCR and deleted old recordings, and be knee-deep in whatever crime statistics analysis book she’d borrowed from the library that week. Instead, she spends her evening writing and ripping up draft letters to her nuisance neighbour.

In the end, she resorts to just correcting his grammar and spelling in aggressive red pen and sticking it back on his door. Intent on having the last word, she scribbles at the bottom, _Have an excellent night! Let me know if you’re selling tickets to your 2am concerts!_ She’s never been a particularly sarcastic person – rather, people have often mistaken her love of following instructions, binders, and filling out application forms as sarcasm. But somehow her ‘friendly’ dispute with apartment 69 has escalated into a full-on war, and it’s one Amy doesn’t plan on losing.

The next morning, Amy emerges from her apartment donning her favourite burgundy pantsuit and a buoyantly good mood. For the first time in nearly two weeks, she’s relatively well-rested and the bags under her eyes are much less pronounced, all because she managed to single-handedly silence apartment 69. She can’t help the satisfied smile that’s been hanging on her lips all morning – clearly, Noisy Guy was no match for Amy Santiago. She struts through the doors of the six-four with a renewed confidence and secures signed confessions from no less than two perps in as many hours, a personal record.

She’s considering whether or not to ring Kylie and see if she wants to get drinks at Shaw’s instead of meeting at the library as planned as she bounces up the stairs to her apartment.

And then she sees the note stuck to her door. It’s written in _crayon_ , which is fitting, because Amy’s certain a toddler has better penmanship than this. It’s not even in cursive, for God’s sake.

_hey, it’s me again!! (#69)_

_sup neighbor and thanks for your note last night (did you get that paper from your grandma?). I had to pull an all-night shift at work yesterday and i only just got home so im sorry i wasn’t here to play you some amazing tunes, I hope you had a good evening anyway :)_

_sooooo i managed to score you some tickets to those concerts – check it out!_

_~later_

Pinned to the note are two haphazardly cut ‘tickets’ that Noisy Guy has clearly made himself. Against her will, Amy’s impressed – they look semi-professional. The only obvious giveaway that they’re not real is that he’s written ‘Super Dope Owesome Concert – Headline Act: Jake the Hero – Abs of Steel’ and then underneath, ‘feat. Old Lady Who Lives in Apartment 70’. He’s then added – in green gel pen – _that past week and a half was just a practice! doors close at 1, don’t be late ;)_

Amy stares at the tickets for a solid ten seconds before, fingers twitching, she rips them violently from her door and stomps into her kitchen with enough vigour to shake the walls. She has never found anyone remotely as irritating as her smartass, cocky, _jerk_ of a neighbour, ‘Jake’. She curses him up and down as she changes into pyjamas and stuffs her feet into slippers before flopping down onto her couch with a glass of wine.

Looking at the tickets for too long makes her fingers stiffen with the desire to clench into fists, so she cheers herself up by curling up with an episode of Property Brothers and her favourite winter blanket. One episode quickly turns into another and then another, and before she knows it, the combination of the television’s quiet hum and the soothing effect of the alcohol has lulled her into a light sleep.

It’s short-lived.

Because the next thing she knows, it’s one a.m. and someone – no guesses who – is blasting what Amy, startled awake with her mouth narrowly agape and eyes bleary, immediately identifies as a Leirkrakeegovnian song she was introduced to years ago during routine door-duty with her partner. She’s only pulled from a momentary reflection on whatever happened to Mlep(clay)nos by the unmistakable sound of laughter on the other side of the wall, loud and braying and possibly the most obnoxious thing she’s ever heard.

And it’s as though something just snaps in her, hot and white and blinding, and before she fully knows what she’s doing she’s wrenched open her front door and is _pounding_ on apartment 69 with heavy, balled fists and a furrowed brow.

‘Open your fucking door, right this second or so help me-!’ Amy bellows. To her disbelief, the music doesn’t stop, but simmers down to a quavering volume before the door is carefully pulled open, and suddenly all the fury bleeds out of Amy and she’s standing there in a stupor, mouth agape, right fist raised stiffly.

Noisy Guy (‘Jake’) is – well – hot.

Distractingly hot. It’s not just the unkempt brown hair that winds languidly across his forehead, or the soft hues of his dark, dark eyes – _God,_ those eyes – but the incandescent smile lighting up his entire face. It’s broad and toothy and unashamedly goofy, in a way that curls Amy’s toes just as it curls at the edges. It’s accentuated by the dimples puncturing his cheeks which somehow emphasise those big brown eyes – a sort of russet, Amy thinks – and wow, that’s a beautiful smile, and why was she even here in the first place?

‘Uh – um – well-’ she blusters, as Noisy Guy’s smile morphs from neutral to bemused and his eyes narrow as they take in her face. They rove carefully over her flustered countenance and abruptly, he’s smiling again, albeit cheekily, but in a way that has her heart humming furiously. It’s then that she becomes horrifyingly aware that she’s only wearing flannel boy-shorts and a navy tank top, so her legs, chest and neck are exposed and she catches his eyes flickering greedily over her before affixing back on her face, and it’s his turn to look – she thinks – a little flustered.

It’s then that she remembers why she’s at his door, scantily clad and practically vibrating with anger mere seconds ago.

‘Look, you inconsiderate jerk,’ she says, her voice low, and surprisingly, steady, ‘I’ve absolutely _had it_ with you and your music and your horrible action movies and your stupid notes-’

‘ _Horrible action movie_?’ Noisy Guy says, with a theatrical gasp. ‘It’s Die Hard, and it’s a classic. Best cop movie ever made, doy.’

Amy rolls her eyes and crosses her arms with a guarded expression. She should have known Noisy Guy would be a smartass and yet a fool to boot, because-

‘Firstly, everyone knows that Training Day is the best cop movie ever made.’ she says waspishly, and Noisy Guy pulls a disgusted ‘really?’ face to which she can only suppress her laughter. ‘And secondly, that’s not why I’m here at whatever time in the morning-’

‘Right right right right right.’ Noisy Guy interrupts her again, holding up his hands and catching the door with his foot. As he does so, his door swings more ajar and Amy can’t help but notice that he’s wearing sweatpants that cling deliciously low on his hips and he’s wearing fluffy monster slippers which in any other circumstance, she might find adorable.

But he’s got a shit-eating grin on his face and he’s looking at her like – well – she doesn’t know exactly how, and there’s a twinge in her gut that she doesn’t want to think too hard about, but-

‘You must be my neighbour!’ he says, happily, and Amy’s hands migrate to her hips which only makes him grin wider. ‘Great to finally meet you in person rather than paper. I’ve been calling you Doris in my head because that’s the most old-ladyish name I could think of, but you don’t _look_ much like a Doris. I don’t know whether I’m disappointed or not. Am I? Nah.’

His eyes are twinkling and there’s that seemingly unbreakable toothy grin and Amy can’t ignore the potential double meaning of what he’s saying, but she pushes that aside in favour of directing him her best glare. She’s honed it exhaustively since its first debut when her brother Luis made fun of her binder collection in front of his cute friend and it now has the power to reduce even the most resilient of perps to a trembling mess.

But Noisy Guy doesn’t even flinch.

‘Wanting to be able to sleep in the early hours of the morning doesn’t make me an old lady,’ she snaps. ‘I didn’t realise I was living next to a toddler with really bad taste in music-’

‘Hey!’ Noisy Guy interrupts, and leans forward conspiratorially. ‘Say whatever you want about me, but don’t insult Taylor.’

Amy rolls her eyes and squirms as she fights to keep a smile off her face. It would severely undermine her whole ‘angry neighbour’ angle if she started laughing at his idiotic jokes.

‘Hey, look,’ he says suddenly, and she narrows her eyes. ‘I’m sorry about, y’know, the notes and everything. I didn’t realise how thin the walls were until I saw your note and it was just too easy to push your buttons after that. I didn’t mean to keep you up every night, I was gonna knock on your door later and call a truce.’

He sounds sincere enough, and he’s got this frustratingly boyish charm that permeates every word of his apology, so it’s all she can to do shrug and allow her face to slacken into a faintly annoyed smile. ‘It’s okay. I’m sorry for shouting at you. It’s not like me. I’m usually much more professional than this, when I’m running on enough sleep.’

Jake grins. ‘Were you really gonna report me to the Super?’

Amy quirks an eyebrow. ‘If you didn’t shut up, then yes. I’m on good terms with Earl. You’d have been out of here faster than you can say sabotage.’

Jake’s entire face lights up, and Amy’s heart skips a beat. ‘Was that a Taylor reference? I knew you liked my music!’ he fist-pumps the air and his amusement seems only to be heightened by Amy’s unimpressed reaction.

‘I’m Jake,’ he says, taking her hand as soon as she proffers it. His hand is warm and soft and as she traces his palm with her fingers as they pull apart a muscle shifts in his jaw and she swallows. ‘Not the most conventional way for neighbours to meet. But definitely the funnest.’

 _Not a word,_ Amy thinks, but before she can voice this, she remembers something. ‘Wait here one second.’

Amy darts back into her own apartment and grabs her ‘welcome list’ from the kitchen counter, shrugging on the old college sweatshirt lying on the back of a chair as she does so. When she returns to the hallway, Jake is leaning against his doorframe with a couchant air, still grinning at her in a way that she won’t admit makes her pulse spike and her cheeks flame.

‘Here,’ Amy hands him the list, brushing her hair impatiently from her eyes, ‘it’s just, I don’t know, a few things I thought you might find useful. Moving to this neighbourhood.’

Jake’s eyebrows practically disappear into his hairline as he scans the list, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, but he’s smiling, even if it’s in a bewildered way. ‘I uh, only moved from a couple blocks away.’

‘Oh.’ Amy deflates, her shoulders slumping, and he must notice, because immediately he adds ‘but hey, this is cool. I’ve never tried this…uh…stationary store… before.’

‘What, Papello? That place is legendary. They just got in these new summer folders which are perfect for vacation organisation-’ Amy’s excited babbling comes to a halt when she catches sight of Jake’s face. He’s _still_ smiling (does he ever stop?) but this time it’s twisted with humour and she can see he’s fighting an internal battle over whether or not it’s too soon to make fun of her.

‘I just realised,’ he says instead, ‘I still don’t know your name, Doris.’

 ‘It’s Amy.’ she says, and it’s then that she notices the flour scattered over his plain shirt and dusting his fingertips, and now, her own. ‘Were you…in the middle of something?’

‘Yeah, I was making breakfast.’ says Jake, casting a sheepish glance into his own flat. ‘Trying to, anyway. I’m not…great at cooking.’

‘It’s half twelve,’ Amy scrunches her nose and peers at him disdainfully.

‘Yeah, I had a really late shift at work and I was hungry,’ Jake shrugs. ‘I’ve only got eggs and milk in my fridge, so we’re having brunch at midnight, y’all.’ Suddenly, he looks up at her with huge, hopeful eyes. ‘You don’t think you could summarise how to make pancakes to an amateur, do you?’

This is the point when Amy should tell Jake that she can’t cook to save her life; that she’s permanently banned from her best friend Kylie’s kitchen after the time she tried to make pasta salad and used fish oil instead of olive. But he’s flashing her that big, goofy smile and his eyes are like liquid sunshine, dark and bright and warming her all over, and the adrenaline has calmed to a vague murmur in her veins and it’s making her brave (or stupid, she can’t decide).

‘I could just show you,’ she says, and Jake looks surprised by her boldness but not unhappy about it either, and as he’s beckoning her inside his apartment Amy sees his eyes trail the outline of her legs and a tiny jolt of something blistering and electric shoots through her. ‘If that’s what it takes to keep your music down.’

‘Um, so I should have warned you, it’s a bit messy.’ Jake stuffs his hands in his pockets and unabashedly grins at Amy as a faint proclamation of horror escapes her.

Jake’s apartment is, simply, a disaster. He’s got six massage chairs (six!) all slanted at incongruous angles, a turntable blanketed in a thick sheet of dust, a dirty basketball, some broken action figures desperately in need of a good polish, and a dining table that Amy can nearly hear groaning beneath the weight of what looks like six months’ worth of unopened mail. There’s a plastic water pistol leaking over the side of the radiator while a shedding, dead plant festers on the windowsill, an ancient radio dumped on top of the muted television, a guitar (she’s slightly intrigued) and, to top it all off, there’s at least eight cardboard boxes stuffed with things he’s clearly not bothered to unpack yet.

And that’s without even mentioning his kitchen. It’s the same set-up as Amy’s, only Jake’s doesn’t resemble a mirage with its sheer gleam of cleanliness. He hasn’t got a doily-encrusted surface in sight. Rather, there are at least four pizza flyers from ‘Sal’s’ tacked onto the fridge, half empty orange soda cans littering the draining board, a measuring jug propped up precariously on a tea-towel that’s probably never seen a washing machine and dear God, there is flour sprinkled on every surface and sticky puddles of batter on the floor and she can see pieces of eggshell floating in the oil he’s got sizzling away on the stove.

Amy feels faint just looking at the chaos that is Jake’s apartment, but she clears her throat and says, ‘Never heard of Marie Kondo, huh?’

Jake looks baffled, but it’s a little defensively that he says, ‘it’s creative clutter.’ Amy rolls her eyes and that stupid grin has cracked across his face again when he adds, ‘I guess you could say my place is so messy even Marie Kondo-it!’

It’s a really stupid joke and Amy doesn’t want to laugh at it, but Jake’s face is frozen in a cartoon-esque smile and she can’t help giggling. Jake looks so proud at having made her laugh only five minutes after she was shouting at him in a burst of unadulterated rage that Amy’s heart skips a beat as she gingerly makes her way into his kitchen.

‘So, pancakes,’ she says uncertainly, and if Jake picks up on the tremor in her voice, he doesn’t let on. Instead, he identifies the counter with the least amount of flour on it and hops on, legs swinging, and looks to her expectantly.

‘I think we’ll have to start again with the batter,’ Amy says, grimacing at the brown slop in Jake’s mixing bowl. ‘Have you got a mix or anything that might make this easier?’

Jake shakes his head. ‘I didn’t buy any groceries. I had an order of beef jerky that was meant to be arriving today but no doy.’

Amy can’t tell if he’s being serious or not, so she grabs the nearby bag of flour – there’s not much left – and upends it into a clean bowl.

‘I know I’m no expert, but aren’t you supposed to measure the flour?’ Jake says lightly.

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ says Amy, far more nonchalantly than she feels. Messing up a recipe in her best friend’s kitchen is one thing, but if she makes a fool out of herself in front of her hot neighbour within an hour of them meeting, she will never live it down. ‘Besides, I’m guessing you don’t own any recipe books. You break the eggs – no shell this time.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ Jake salutes her as he jumps down from the counter and Amy shakes her head but doesn’t disguise her smile.

They work in tandem, and it’s actually – despite the time and Amy’s exhaustion – fun? Jake turns up the Taylor Swift and is shocked and horrified in equal measures when Amy confesses she only knows a few songs, so he chants along to the lyrics in the hopes of teaching her the greatest hits as they cook. His kitchen isn’t that big, so it’s unavoidable that they brush fingers and their elbows nudge a few times, but at one point Jake’s hand skirts Amy’s waist as he moves her to get to the oven, making contact with the bare skin just exposed between her top and shorts and they both leap back as though they’ve been electrocuted. The awkwardness dissipates when Jake coughs and makes a comment about how Amy’s batter closely resembles something his friend Charles uses as homemade dog shampoo, only to come hurtling back in full pelt when Jake, pretending to pour the batter down the sink, accidentally flicks a dollop on Amy’s nose and laughing at her expression, reaches over to wipe it off with a faintly trembling finger.

 _If he puts his finger in his mouth, I might die_ , Amy thinks, but of course he doesn’t, because this is not a movie and Jake is not her love interest (right?), so he just wipes his finger on a tea-towel and she turns away to pour the batter onto the griddle.

‘They smell a bit funky.’ Jake says finally, looking at the pancakes that are turning black around the edges and are resolutely gooey in the middle. ‘And not in a good, _Cold Medina_ sort of way.’

‘I added all the normal ingredients,’ Amy says with a huff, frowning at the mixture. ‘I couldn’t find any butter so I just added water to some custard powder, but they’re interchangeable…I think.’

She looks over at Jake after a few beats of silence to see his usual smile is absent and he’s wincing. Embarrassment, cold and unforgiving, washes over her as she wheels around and flings the pancakes onto a plate. ‘Maybe they’ll taste better than they look.’

She doesn’t dare turn back to see Jake’s face, but instead stabs a fork into the least offending pancake and chews. It’s _revolting_ , with a crisp, rubbery skin on the outside and a sickly goo in the middle.

Amy abandons the pretence and spits it into a paper towel, which she promptly throws into the trash. Without turning to face Jake, she raises a hand to her mouth and says, with a tiny groan, ‘Jake, I’m so sorry. I’ve wasted all your ingredients and now you’ve got nothing to eat. This is such a bad first impression, I promise I’m not a bad neighbour-’

Realising Jake hasn’t said anything for about three minutes – which, she’s already come to realise, is an unusual feat for him – Amy braces herself and wringing her hands, glances over.

He’s shaking with silent laughter.

‘Um-’ Amy doesn’t know what to say, other than that she’s overcome with relief that he’s not even the slightest bit angry that she’s destroyed his kitchen and the repulsive aroma of the pancakes has probably soaked into his walls by now.

‘You’re even worse at cooking than me,’ Jake says, when he’s finally stopped laughing. ‘These smell like rotten trout milk.’

‘Is that a smell you’re familiar with?’ Amy says, corners of her mouth curling with distaste.

Jake scrapes the pancakes into the trash and gestures to his phone. ‘I’m gonna order pizza. Probably uh, should have done that in the first place.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Amy says again, smiling at him sheepishly, hoping she hasn’t made a total idiot of herself because he’s so _cute_ and she’s so tired and they’re both splattered with dried pancake batter and they’ve probably both got work tomorrow.

‘It’s fine.’ Jake says, shrugging. ‘Call it payback for me keeping you up for two weeks.’

‘I’ll clean this up.’ she gestures to the kitchen, which is a thousand times messier than it was an hour ago. ‘I’ve got some cleaning stuff at my place.’ Actually, she’s got three designated cleaning cupboards, with a colour-coordinated labelling system and five types of sponge. But that’s a level of dorkiness reserved for close friends and family. So, Kylie and her parents. (Not her brothers. Not after they discovered that she organises her dollar bills by denomination and messed up the order on purpose).

‘Nah, leave it. I’ll just deal with it later.’ Jake nods at her. ‘Dishes don’t mould for like, a week at least. I learned from experience.’

So. Amy might be a dork, but Jake is a human disaster. She rolls her eyes at him, he pulls a face at her, and it’s as she’s about to leave his apartment that she spots the framed Die Hard poster in the entryway. It’s been secured with a flimsy hook and consequently sits at a sideways angle.

‘Wow, you really love that movie.’ she says. It’s more of a statement than a question, but Jake beams.

‘Like I said, best cop movie ever. “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!”’ Jake imitates firing a gun and Amy’s heart lurches for maybe the fifth time that evening, but she maintains a stoic expression.

‘Alright, so not a big fan of my music _or_ my décor,’ Jake crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. She shouldn’t find it sexy. And she doesn’t! She definitely doesn’t.

Sue her, she does.

‘It’s a little crooked for my taste.’ Amy retorts, pointing to the poorly slung poster. She moves to pull the door open, and when she’s standing on the other side of the threshold, she turns around to see Jake smirking.

‘It’s a little crooked for my taste, title of your sextape.’

Amy doesn’t let herself crack a smile until he’s closed the door.

x

After the Pancake Incident, Jake becomes her friend. Well, sort of. Essentially, he _inserts_ himself into her life with remarkable ease and an explosive burst of colour. If Amy had to summarise Jake in one colour, she thinks he’d be the precise, ebullient shade of the orange soda she now has in her fridge for whenever he comes over. Jake just brought it over one day and deposited it in there without saying a word. (God, she’s a sucker. She didn’t let Teddy bring a single Pilsner into her apartment for the entirety of their nine-month courtship. If that doesn’t say something about their relationship, what does.)

They’ve only known each other for two weeks now, but Amy’s left reeling with how comfortable she already feels around him. It started because Jake was horrified that she’d never seen Die Hard and bugged her until she agreed to watch it with him ‘because you seem like the kind of person that asks a lot of questions during movies and my commentary is second-to-none’ although it turns out that Jake is the one who doesn’t stop babbling when they eventually put it on. If he’s not mouthing along with the characters he’s giving her some obscure fact about the on-set stylist and Amy can’t help but smile because he’s secretly a huge dork, just like she is.

It’s a little unnerving, how they’ll be sharing Chinese food – Amy still tries to maintain she’s a decent cook, but Jake manages to shout her down by presenting the selfie she didn’t know he took of them in the kitchen with the pancakes from hell – and watching Jeopardy on Amy’s couch – they both love it, so it makes sense to watch it together, right? – and her heart will squeeze and her stomach backflip at how _easy_ it is.

There’s the little matter of her gargantuan crush on him, of course, but Amy tries not to dwell on that too much. It doesn’t mean anything that she’s kept every single one of the stupid post-it notes he’s left on her door when she’s been coerced into overtime and had to cancel one of their movie nights. ( _Hey amy guessing youre either at work or theres a sale on doilies but i found a gag reel of die hard bloopers we haven’t watched yet. just come into my apartment when youre back ill probably be awake – jake)._

It’s also completely insignificant that she frequently loses her train of thought when he smiles at her – even when it’s that smug, shit-eating grin because she’s said something dorky or he’s made a really lame joke and she hasn’t been able to stop herself from giggling. And that whenever he leans over her to grab a bag of potato chips or turn up the volume she accidentally inhales his ridiculously good sugary warmth and feels something hot and electric bite through her veins. Or that she’s noticed the delicate curve of his lips and how their soft thickness might feel against her own, or trailing down her neck-

Completely insignificant.

But, if she’s being honest, there is this…tension…between them. At first, she tries to convince herself she’s imagining it, because Jake’s just her really annoying neighbour who happens to have a way with words and an uncanny ability to make her laugh even when she’s just rolled in from a long, boring shift spent trying to prevent fights from breaking out in the overcrowded holding cell.

Only, Amy knows she’s not imagining it. Because they’ll be sitting on her couch, and Jake’s hand will clumsily brush against hers when he stretches and they’ll both jump back as though they’ve been burned and Jake’s cheeks will be as stubbornly flushed as she knows her own are.

And there’s been times where she’ll be furiously lambasting the contestants on Jeopardy for not knowing something and she’ll absently glance over to see this _look_ on Jake’s face, heated and sort of awed and very not platonic. And they’ll both quickly glance away and decidedly not mention it, but if Jake’s sitting a little closer to her than he was before, that’s their business.

Right?

x

The next Thursday afternoon finds Amy and her partner gearing up to take down a particularly elusive drug supplier. Working on intel from her C.I., Amy’s been preparing for this arrest for the past two months: no longer in danger of falling asleep at her desk, the paperwork has been logged, the warrant submitted, and she’s confident by the end of the day she’ll be excitedly telling Jake about her successful arrest.

It then strikes her that she hasn’t even told Jake that she’s a detective. And, Amy thinks, nonplussed, she doesn’t actually know what Jake does. Other than that it seems to involve working strange hours at often inconvenient times, just like her. Weird.

She’ll ask him tonight, she decides. Just because if she needs to go out of town for an undercover case or something she needs to make sure someone will be around to water her plants and feed her goldfish. No other reason.

‘Ready, Santiago?’ her secondary asks, and Amy shakes her reverie, slides her gun into its holster, and nods. ‘Let’s go.’

They case the location Amy’s C.I. gave her and end up parked across the street from a greasy-looking milkshake place, where the steady flow of traffic and throng of pedestrians keeps them nicely covered. It’s not too long before Amy spots him – Keyton Marks, a primary distributor of the new drug ‘Taxi’ which has been flooding Brooklyn’s streets for months now. She signals to her secondary and in a matter of seconds they’re spilling out of the unmarked car and across the road.

That’s when she sees him.

Jake, exiting the milkshake joint, lips wrapped around a straw stuck into a large chocolate milkshake. Her initial surprise at seeing him is immediately overridden by utter disbelief as her jaw slackens, unable to quite process what she’s seeing. Because suddenly Jake’s turning and she sees an all too familiar badge slung around his neck and he’s pulling a gun surreptitiously from a tan leather holster.

It’s not until a few seconds later, in the midst of the din of car horns raging around her as she stands dumbly in the middle of the road, when her secondary nudges her, that Amy manages to shout ‘NYPD! Put your hands in the air!’, just as Jake’s yelling the exact same thing.

He turns around, confused, spots Amy, and his own mouth hangs open, but there’s no time to waste asking questions because Marks, watching the scene before him unfold, takes his chance and flees. Jake and Amy exchange a final bewildered look before they’re both chasing after the perp.

For someone who regularly eats a lot of junk food, Jake’s maddeningly fast, and it’s all Amy can do to keep up with him as they follow Marks down a dingy, dead-end alley where he’s cowering behind a dumpster. It’s beyond Amy why perps always seem to think diving into a pile of steaming garbage is a good escape plan, but she doesn’t dwell on that for too long, because all bizarre events of the past two minutes aside, this is _her_ arrest, and there’s no way in hell she’s letting some random who’s probably from the one-two-five steal it from right under her nose. Even if it is her neighbour. Who she kind of _likes_. A lot.

Unfortunately, it seems as though Jake has the same attitude.

‘Dope alley.’ he says, grinning, as though they aren’t about to initiate a tug-of-war over a perp. ‘I think this is where Batman’s parents got killed.’

Amy rolls her eyes and steps forward, one hand resting behind her back on her handcuffs, but Jake, still breathing a little heavily, holds up a hand to stop her.

‘Thanks for your help,’ he’s panting, but somehow still smirking, as he pushes Marks to the ground and slaps on the cuffs. Amy doesn’t know whether she wants to slap or kiss that insufferable smirk from his face. ‘…but I’ve got it from here, _Detective_.’

‘Funny,’ Amy says breathily. ‘I was about to say the same thing to you.’

‘Come on,’ Jake folds his arms. ‘I’ve been after this guy for like, a month. And we caught him in the nine-nine. That makes him my arrest.’

‘You’re from the nine-nine?’ says Amy, frowning. ‘Wait…Jake. As in, _Peralta_?’

‘The one and only.’ Jake says proudly. ‘Went undercover for sixty-three days last year and single-handedly brought home one of the largest RICO operations this side of Brooklyn.’

If there’s one thing they established early on in their relationship, it’s that they’re both ridiculously competitive. So of course it extends to their working lives.

‘I was going to say, the Peralta that made the local news for getting escorted out of a Criss Angel magic show?’ she retorts, kneeling down beside Marks.

‘That was a misunderstanding.’ Jake says immediately, placing a possessive arm over Marks, who is murmuring disgruntledly under his breath. ‘Keyton Marks, you’re under arrest for-’

‘Hey!’ Amy exclaims. ‘He’s _my_ arrest, Peralta, I’ve already filled in all the paperwork and submitted a warrant-’

‘Yeah, well while you were doing all that boring administrative stuff-’ he pauses, expectantly.

‘Santiago.’

‘- _Santiago_ , I was actually taking this guy down.’

‘Yeah, sure looked that way when you were slurping on that chocolate milkshake.’

‘My milkshake!’ Jake abruptly jumps to his feet, scouring the ground in panic. ‘I must’ve dropped it. Man, that was like six dollars.’

‘Feel free to go back and get it,’ Amy says sweetly, and Jake snorts, raising a derisive eyebrow.

‘Yeah, so you can take credit for my arrest? I don’t think so, Santiago. Wait.’ he pauses. ‘Santiago…as in winner of Coolest Kill at Tactical Village last year?’ he blinks down at her, eyes alight with a new respect.

‘That’s me.’

‘Noice!’ Jake says, grinning, and it’s beautifully genuine, unravelling those well-worn laughter lines and Amy feels her heart stammering for the third time that day. She can’t help but notice that he’s ditched the sweatpants for cheap, damaged jeans and an expensive leather jacket. She can just about see his taut back muscles twitching beneath the soft leather and wonders how it’d feel to yank him by his collar towards her and if he still tastes like chocolate-

‘Um…so how are we going to decide who gets him?’ says Amy, averting her gaze back to Marks.

‘We could play rock-paper-scissors?’ Jake suggests, and it’s only when Amy faces him again that she realises he’s serious.

‘Jake, we’re talking about arresting a criminal here, not who gets the last slice of pizza.’ she rolls her eyes, and Jake folds his arms.

‘Alright, so what’s your big idea?’

‘We could mark the exact spot in which he was arrested and then use a compass to measure whose precinct it’s closer to-’

Jake mimes snoring and Amy stops, scowling.

‘Fine, we’ll play for it. But don’t act like a butthead when you lose.’ she warns him, and Jake laughs.

‘What?’ says Amy hotly.

‘Nothing, just can’t believe you’d call me a butthead. We’re both adults here, Amy, you should have more respect for the uniform we both – ow!’

x

Jake wins.

x

‘Hey, sorry you lost,’ Jake says as he pushes Marks into the back of his car, tilting his head to look over at Amy. ‘I’m just really good at that game.’

Amy pulls a dismissive face. ‘Whatever. We both know if we’d done it my way, I’d have won.’

‘Lame.’

‘So, I guess-’

‘Let me make it up to you,’ Jake interrupts, and Amy regards him suspiciously.

‘How? Are you going to promise not to play any more Beastie Boys this month? I swear to God, Jake, if I have to hear “No Sleep in Brooklyn” one more time-’

‘Nah, I was thinking I could take you on a date. A real one, not just watching TV on your couch.’

Amy just about chokes on air, but when she locks eyes with Jake she sees he’s grinning goofily at her, one hand resting lightly on his hip. He’s serious.

‘Okay,’ she says, and her shy smile suddenly breaks into something brilliant and blazing and Jake’s looking back at her like it’s warming him all over, and maybe it is.

x

‘Jake-’

‘Mmf-’

‘Jake, my dress is stuck in your door-’

He pulls away, chuckling softly, from where he’s got her pressed against the frame, and Amy nearly whines at the absence of his insistent lips against her neck.

‘I can help you with that,’ he says, and _God,_ his eyes are only marginally softer than his touch as he impatiently brushes her scrabbling fingers away from her dress and pulls the zipper down her back. He buries his mouth, hot and forceful, on her clavicle, and Amy stifles a moan as her hands claw at his scalp.

Without warning, he slides a hand to her waist and his grip is firm as he turns to propel her against his kitchen counter. Jake wordlessly skims his hands, rough and calloused underneath her loosening dress and hitches her carelessly onto the surface. Amy’s legs snake around his hips to haul him closer and they both groan at the friction of his tightening denim against her bare thighs.

He’s kissing her, tongue sliding easily into her mouth, and he tastes like the vanilla cheesecake they shared at dinner, the light, sugary froth dusted on his lips, and gently pulling away, Amy moves her head to suck at the constellation of freckles on his shoulder when she spots it.

It’s her ‘rating’ letter from only a week or two ago. The four Sal’s leaflets have been discarded in favour of her passive-aggressive note, which Jake has tacked onto the fridge with a heart magnet. It’s a silly gesture and probably done with the intention of humiliating her whenever his friends come over, but something in her tangibly shifts and there’s the clunk in her heart and suddenly she’s kissing him harder, catching the fullness of his bottom lip between her teeth and winding her hands around his neck.

She thinks, even as she’s writhing beneath him hours later, and he’s murmuring her name against the beads of sweat jewelling her skin, that maybe she’s in too deep already, but by the looks of things, so is he.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm british and I had to change 'bin' to 'trash' and 'sofa' to 'couch' about 2594059304 times so if the lack of americanisation is glaring, it's because I don't know what I'm doing with it sorry  
> Comments + kudos are the things of d r e a m s  
> also feel free to leave me AU prompts


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